Oscar De La Hoya fires back at fellow promoter Dana White for the UFC executive’s recent fiery statements.
Last weekend marked Golden Boy’s first dive into mixed martial arts promotion. It was obviously a great night for Tito Ortiz, who finally notched a win over Chuck Liddell after 12 years, but for both fighters, receiving $200,000 and $250,000 salaries respectively (excluding sponsorship and pay-per-view earnings) is indeed a big win.
But given how Liddell ungracefully ended his night with a fourth straight knockout loss, many questioned and even opposed the making of the fight in the first place. One of them is UFC president Dana White, who wanted nothing to do with the matchup, because of his long-time friendship with “The Iceman.”
The outspoken UFC executive recently put De La Hoya on blast for promoting the fight, along with other untoward adjectives for the six-division world boxing champion.
People even think I’m remotely bad mouthing Chuck Liddell, but the reality is — first of all, I heard last week the cokehead ‘Oscar De La Weirdo’ is talking shit that I don’t have any place to tell guys when to retire. First of all, it’s called ‘friendship’ you f—king cokehead.
I’ve been friends with Chuck Liddell for 20 years and the reality is that Chuck Liddell retired when he should have retired. Eight, nine years ago, however long it was. And Chuck Liddell’s almost 50 years old and has no business fighting anymore. The fact that the state of California even let that fight happen is disgusting. Disgusting.
“The Golden Boy” recently spoke with TMZ to respond to his fellow promoter.
”Dana is so small and threatened by our success with DAZN and now in MMA that he is bringing up news from a decade ago to try to stay relevant,” De La Hoya said. “Boxing has entirely rejected him. And, MMA fighters are now realizing they don’t have to risk their lives just so he can get rich.”
”Golden Boy and I are moving forward and are bigger than ever. Dana should shut the f—k up and try to figure out how to save his own company.”
Ortiz also fired back at White, stating him and Liddell were not compensated correctly. He also criticized the UFC president for not giving them a share of the $4 billion that the company earned from the WME-IMG sale.